Torture

Has Sean Hannity welched on his promise to be waterboarded for charity? On April 22, 2009, Hannity told guest Charles Grodin he'd consent to being waterboarded. According to our calculations, that's 927 days ago or two years, six months and 14 days.

Dick Cheney spent a full hour with Sean Hannity Tuesday night (8/30/11) – and another one is coming Thursday – in which the toughest questions asked were probably about his health. But late in the interview, as Hannity was fishing for attacks on President Obama, Cheney defended Guantanamo Bay prison on the grounds that it’s good for the world to fear the United States. Then Cheney immediately defended Gitmo as “probably a much more friendly environment and a comfortable situation” than any the prisoners would face at home. Later, Cheney boasted about his administration having “taken down” the Iraq terror program. Hannity, of course, didn’t challenge any of the assertions.

In advance of Dick Cheney’s memoirs coming out, Fox News devoted an entire hour showcasing Cheney recently (8/19/11). Need I say there were rose-colored glasses for Cheney? And yet somehow host Bret Baier managed to work in some swipes at President Obama. The special was called “Dick Cheney Revealed” but it should have been called “Dick Cheney Touched Up.”

As I posted last week, Senator John McCain – a man with personal and professional authority on the subject of torture – stated in both a Washington Post op-ed and on the floor of the U.S. Senate that so-called “enhanced interrogations” did not assist in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and that in fact the techniques produced “false and misleading information.” McCain also noted that harsh techniques are not only immoral and un-American but actually endanger our troops. Sean Hannity – a man who never spent a moment of his life in the military, or working in intelligence or national security – nonetheless continued to insist not only that torture played a role in finding Bin Laden but was a crucial factor. Hannity “backed up” his claim by falsely saying that CIA Director “Leon Panetta acknowledged it.”

You can barely turn on Fox News lately without hearing about the importanceofwaterboardingand"enhancedinterrogations" to our national security. That is until the invitation of rapper Common to the White House became the nation'smostimportantissue. But before that, on The O'Reilly Factor, contributor Dennis Miller said it was immoral NOT TO waterboard - with O'Reilly's evident approval. Plus, there was Donald Rumsfeld saying on the air it was a good thing Osama Bin Laden was killed because the Obama administration's prohibition against "enhanced interrogations" "would be unlikely to produce much intelligence from Osama Bin Laden." But yeserday, Sen. John McCain - a man with personal and professional authority on the issue - spoke out against the process and its use in the hunt for Bin Laden and I didn't hear a peep about it on the "fair and balanced" network.